As I recall — and Danny may remember slightly differently — but as I recall, he came to me with that deal on draft day [in 2013] and said, “We’re going to get two first-round picks from Brooklyn for [Garnett, Pierce, Terry, and White], and take on some contracts.” And I said, “OK, are [the picks] unprotected?” And he said, “Yes, in fact, they are.” I said, “Great. Let’s go get a third pick.” And he goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” but, “All right, I’ll ask.” And he’s not afraid to ask, he wasn’t pushing back. But he went and asked, and he said, “Unbelievable. We got a third pick. This is great.” And I said, “Great. Go get a fourth pick. I think these guys have deal fever — we’re going to keep going until they say no. I think they’ve been told by ownership to get the deal done, so let’s go back.” And Danny sort of gave me a look, like I don’t want to lose the deal by pushing too hard. Normally we try to play down the middle of the road with people, [but] I said, “Go push aggressively for a fourth pick.”
And so he went back, he came back to me and he said, “OK, you’ve got your wish. They’ve said no now … they’re not going to give us a fourth pick.” I said fine, make that fourth pick into a swap. Because swapping a pick doesn’t feel like you’re losing a pick. You still have a pick, and it’s pretty unlikely that we would be able to swap — that would mean we were better than they are. And we think they’re going to be pretty good with this trade. So just get the swap and call it a day. So we got that swap, and that swap turned into Jayson Tatum and another first-round pick.